I made this infographic for myself for while researching the Philip K. Dick stories published in the years 1954 and 1955.
I find it rather stunning to look at.
The data in BLACK all comes from the form filed on November 22, 1983 and submitted to the U.S. Copyright Office under Registration Number RE0000190631 (SEE THE ACTUAL SCANS HERE).
The RED and YELLOW highlights are my own notations.
As you can see the copyright claimants “Laura Coelho, Christopher Dick & Isa Dick” claimed 37 stories were published in 1955. This is false. Only the 12 stories were published in 1955. The remainder, all 25 of them (highlighted in RED), were actually published in 1954 in other magazines, books, or issues. The 12 stories that were genuinely eligible for renewal are correctly noted, the 25 submitted that were not eligible are false.
What do you make of that?
To me it looks like 25 cases of deliberate fraud. To me it looks like the public has been denied its rights to these stories for nearly three decades.
Maybe there’s a math whiz out there could tell us what the chances of making 25 honest clerical errors only in the 25 cases where the clerk’s client benefits, without, at the same time, making any similar mistakes in the 12 cases where a typo doesn’t accrue a benefit to the clerk’s client (namely in those cases where a story was actually eligible for a legal renewal).
I guess I’m starting on another Dick kick. I’ve been thinking, and reading a lot of his short stories lately. Thanks in part to the two Blackstone Audio audiobook collections entitled The Selected Stories Of Philip K. Dick.
I’ve read Colony maybe a half dozen times over the years, I still find it utterly readable.
First published in the June 1953 issue of Galaxy magazine, Colony is a cleverly plotted one-note tale of paranoia and identity.
Robert Silverberg’s wonderful 1987 essay on it, entitled Colony: I Trusted The Rug Completely, points out how very far ahead of the reader Dick is. Dick indulges our expectations, teases us with a foreshadowing doom and still pulls off the unexpected twist ending. The story is also notable for inventing a couple of minor tropes; namely the Robot Door and the Robot Psyche Tester (both with emotive personalities rivaling that of their fellow human protagonists).
This is one of the few PKD tales given the old radio drama treatment.
Unfortunately, there were a few detrimental changes made to the 1956 X-Minus One adaptation. Maybe it’s the audio drama format that neutralizes much of the humor in Colony. It certainly pacifies some of the absurdities. And the 1950s script adds in an unnecessary bit of sexual harassment that’s absent from the original 1950s text (perhaps so as to have it better fit into the decade). On the whole, however, X-Minus One’s adaptation is still well worth listening to. It retains much of the dialogue and the anti-consumerism message, and it also retains the excellent and story-making ending.
Dick wrote, in regards to this story:
The ultimate paranoia is not when everyone is against you, it’s when everything is against you. Instead of “My boss is plotting against me”, it would be “My boss’ phone is plotting against me”.
Here’s the play:
X-Minus One – Colony
Based on the story by Philip K. Dick; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: NBC
Broadcast: October 10, 1956 Colony tells the story of an advance research team scouting the planet Blue in the Aldebaran star system to assess what may be required to render this newly discovered planet habitable. Strange occurrences soon plague members of the scout team, as they are attacked by inanimate objects with the unmistakable intent to kill. It is soon discovered that some force, or entities unknown, have the power to mimic any conceivable object, rendering even seemingly benign items such as a belt, a bath towel, or even a weapon such as a blaster, instruments of murder.
Here are the original illustrations from Galaxy:
And here are the images and the audio combined into a YouTube video:
First published in the magazine Orbit, No. 2, (which was published in 1953), this story did not have it’s copyright renewed. HERE is the copyright renewal form showing same.
The SFFaudio Podcast #150 – Scott, Jesse, Tamahome, and Kristin (A.K.A Terpkristin) talk about recently arrived audiobooks, new releases and more.
Talked about on today’s show:
Scott’s recent arrivals, Philip K. Dick’s The Penultimate Truth and The Crack In Space, Futurama, Allan Kaster’s Timeless Time Travel Tales, “say that five times fast”, Jesse and Luke’s time travel podcasts Sfbrp 151 & 152, “mindblown”, Resurrection by Arwen Elys Dayton, “pen name?”, Theodore Sturgeon’s To Marry Medusa (A.K.A The Cosmic Rape), Tam thinks it’s random, Stephen on Goodreads liked it, Robert Silverberg’s short story Passengers is mentioned again, Gregory Bear’s Primordium (Halo: The Forerunner Saga, #2), Kristin is a recovering Halo player, Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein (1949), in the year of Pearl Harbor, a fifth column, “I got nothin”, Dieter Zimmerman’s Brad Lansky And The 4D-Verse audiodrama |READ OUR REVIEW|, good audio like Ruby, Against The Light by Dave Duncan, “here’s one for the haters”, Them Or Us(Hater, #3) by David Moody, Hater (Hater, #1), |READ OUR REVIEW|, “that review still gets comments”, Kristin thinks Gerard Doyle is a good narrator, Farewell To The Master by Harry Bates — it inspired The Day The Earth Stood Still, “is there a theremin?”, Ben Bova and Bill Pogue’s The Trikon Deception, Scott likes Bova’s Grand Tour series, Pogue was an astronaut, “how do you go to the bathroom in space?”, Jesse’s new releases, The Comedy Is Finished by Donald Westlake will be the next readalong, Audiogo sells BBC audiodrama and audiobook mp3s, a new A Princess Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs audiobook, narrated by Scott Brick, hope the movie is good, no nudity, is David Stifel (“That Burroughs Guy“) upset?, he appeared on Sffaudio 137, Tam likes Scott Brick narrating the John Corey books like Plum Island by Nelson DeMille, “wise ass detective”, Philip K. Dick’s Upon The Dull Earth And Other Stories, Jesse helped spur that into creation, now we pick random interests, The Stand by Stephen King is 47 hours, it used to be half as long, Jenny couldn’t stay awake for Insomnia, Larry Niven’s A World Out Of Time, a corpsicle, The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson, revenge version of Robin Hood, Fritz Leiber, George Zebrowski space opera?, Mars Needs Books!, A Llull In The Compass, James Blaylock was a steampunk pioneer, Avram Davidson’s Rork!, Larry Correia does magic noir, Elizabeth Hand’s Cass Neary books seem like an older TheGirl With The Dragon Tatoo (Generation Loss and Available Dark), Lev Grossman’s review of book 2, “she’s boiling hard”, The Odyssey narrated by Gandalf, Tam wasn’t super excited by Peter F. Hamilton’s A Quantum Murder (Greg Mandel, #2), Kristen gets converted to superheroes with Wildcards #1 edited by George R.R. Martin, Heroes, Elmore Leonard’s Raylan, Justified tv show, cross breeding from book to tv, psychotic nurse, short descriptions, Elmore’s 10 rules of writing, he likes Margaret Atwood’s descriptive powers, never write ‘Suddenly’, Tam likes Jennifer Pelland’s ebook Machine, James Patrick Kelly told Jennifer “don’t take out the vomit“, you may find it ‘squicky‘, Jennifer Blood comic in one minute, Scarlet comic in one minute, chicks that kick ass, copying or transferring a consciousness, what good does a copy do me?, transporters?, Think Like A Dinosaur by James Patrick Kelly (dramatized version linked here — nope it’s gone), Kristin and Jenny need to watch Star Trek, Norman Spinrad, The Doomsday Machine, a sock dipped in cement, Old Man’s War, Tam’s favorite 1st 2 chapters are in Altered Carbon, hard boiled future
Public Radio International’s To The Best Of Our Knowledge has a new Philip K. Dick special up. Here’s how they describe it:
Nobody blurred the line between his life and his literature more than the legendary science-fiction author, Philip K. Dick. And that’s only fitting since one of the major themes of his fiction is, “What is reality?” This week we take a look at the life and work of the man who’s been described as “one of the most valiant psychological explorers of the twentieth century,” as we commemorate the 30th anniversary of his death.
And here’s the list of speakers:
Jim Fleming, Steve Paulson, Anne Strainchamps, Jonathan Lethem, Anne Dick, Umberto Rossi, and David Gill.
Here’s the audio |MP3| but I’m afraid the file isn’t directly HuffDuffable (though it does readily download).
Here’s a stack of new paperbooks that have recently hit my desk: Included are The Ganymede Takeover by Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson, The Secret Of Red Gate Farm by Carolyn Keene (1931 edition), Stories Of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang, Jennifer Blood, (Vol. 1) by Garth Ennis, King Conan: The Scarlet Citadel by Timothy Truman, and Count To A Trillion by John C. Wright.
There’s a mistake on my part in the video. The Scarlet Citadelis adapted from a Robert E. Howard Conan story, as it turns out it is one of the ones I haven’t read.
X-Minus One – Colony
